When Was the Last Time You Did an Inventory?

WINE TALK
21

Today.

In addition to CT I keep a separate spreadsheet of my off-site storage which organizes the list by box. Someone on the CT boards is also an Excel wiz and has made a cellar map where I can use my login credentials from CT and see what wines I have in each bin or slot based on how their location is labeled in CT. I can just double click on a box or bin on the sheet and see what wine is in there.

22

Generally once a year around thanksgiving, though I did not do it in 2017. I print out my CT inventory and go through it and check off what I have, make notes do what I have that is not on the list, and mark down bottles that are missing. It is getting harder as the cellar grows and with some bulk stowage bins, but it is still manageable when consuming wine while I do it.

23

Over forty years of maintaining a wine cellar- Never.
What’s worse, I couldn’t tell you within a hundred bottles how much wine I have, much less what percentage comes from what region.
I can usually find a bottle when I look for it, though.

24

I keep a pretty good inventory on CT but where I’ve gone wrong is forgetting to delete a bottle I’ve consumed, or label it drunk. I can see how this problem gets magnified the bigger your cellar is. Falling behind or into unorganized disarray with cellar tracking, and then trying to regroup seems like the 7th level of hell so I’m going to try my best to be fastidious about record keeping.

25

Never.

I enjoy stumbling upon lost gems I had forgotten about.

26

x-mas 2015. Took some days off extra and did it. Figure I’m off by 10-20 bottles +/- right now as I’m usually pretty good about inventory, but some squeak through each way.

27

Spring 2016. I did a reinventory and reorg in my Chelsea Wine Storage locker. About 120 cases, and I was able to compare to my old inventory list to understand the mismatches. All by spreadsheet as I’m not on CT. It probably took me about 2 full days of work to do it. I did it not knowing I would move it all at the end of the year. Then when I moved, it was reinventoried. Still I was glad to have things back in order as there were enough glitches and “missing” boxes before that to drive me nuts. It also allowed me to see that I was missing a case of very nice wine that Jay Miller and I eventually figured out got mixed in inadvertently with his wine.

Now MWC (my offsite storage co.) tracks my inventory for me, and I can download it in spreadsheet form. Having the pre-move inventory in perfect shape helps me to see MWC’s clerical errors. (I’m quite sure I don’t own 2016 Dom but I do own 1996!)

28

Smaller home cellar that I transitioned into last year and did complete CT overhaul with barcoding. I’m anal with scanning drunk / gifted though I’m sure I might have a few errors. My wife knows to only grab from the fridge so any errors are my own fault. I’ll likely do a quick inventory check this summer after my springing shipments all arrive.

29

Nope. I retired from professional cello-ing about 4 years ago. champagne.gif

30

Complete? Never. But I will do some targeted checking of boxes at offsite occasionally.

Double but: I am extremely anal retentive with my inventory. One of the main reasons nitty to write a TN (even a cursory one) for every bottle we drink from our collection is that it’s another inventory check. When i dont write a TN, those bottles get placed on the counter until it’s deleted from inventory. The very few “missing presumed drunk” bottles I’ve had have largely been a byproduct of opening cheaper bottles for/with guests on a whim.

Now, if I were to lose my wine TNs notebook, then I’d have a problem!

31

Yeah. And all of these features have been in our “new” site since 2012…

Folks, please read this: Reconciling your inventory - CellarTracker Support

32

They just know you better than you know yourself

33

Thanks for the help, Eric!!! :slight_smile:

34

+1. Inventory so out of whack I stopped using CT years ago.

35

Every year or 2. Each new bottle gets a small stick on label (1" circle) put onto the top of the bottle. As each gets drunk the label gets put onto a sheet of paper and eventually I update the inventory. Some get missed so that’s why I re-do the inventory.

36

I actually completed my cellar inventory yesterday. I had stopped entering tasting notes in CT around 2012, so my inventory was way off. Right around 50% accuracy! Promised myself to be more diligent going forward. Was actually an enjoyable exercise, as I physically removed every bottle from my 3 cellars and re-arranged things. Did some spring cleaning / maintenance too.

37

[cheers.gif] Paid my daughter to do it

38

Took a complete and thorough inventory when we moved everything into our newly built home cellar last year, combining four different locations and taking delivery of all outstanding bottles. We found a number of anomalies in our records at that point, some in our favor and some against. It was an enormous undertaking, especially as we were racing against a heat wave to get all boxes unpacked and racked. As of May 2017, it was perfect, and I bet it’s still pretty close. Having a complete inventory doesn’t preclude me from sometimes “finding” things I didn’t know we had.

39

I try to inventory my wines a couple of times of year. I am coming upon that time really soon. The limiting factor is deliveries from wineries I order from. In my perfect world they would all schedule deliveries within a week or two. The way they do it now it’s spread out over 2 months and it drives me crazy. I also have a wine retailer that considers me one of her ‘best customers’ and she will call me when a wine rep is hawking something extra good and will call me and ask me to attend the tasting to determine if she will stock any of their offerings. Deliveries in Florida are hit and miss and all you can do is wait. Finally I sit back are relax, I’m retired and tomorrow is always there.

40

That would seem to be ideal, to have everyone schedule deliveries with a 2 week span. But when the shippers get slammed, and they have to hire additional help to handle the huge bump in the need for services, that’s when major errors can occur. I have lived it in the past. People working in the warehouses and shippers who don’t know the difference between the winery’s top end wine from their lowest level blend, or don’t know a magnum from a 750ml. Many years ago I lived a headache like this, and tracked the problem down to inept temporary help.